Gavin put out a finger to touch the cube on Dr. Clef’s worktable. The cube was the size of a shoebox and made of a frame of thin beams. And it twisted. The edges crossed one another in impossible ways, with the front going behind the back, or the back coming before the front. It made Gavin dizzy. When his hand approached it, his fingers seemed suddenly too far away. He pulled back.
“What does it do?” Gavin asked.
“Turn the crank on the generator and you will see,” Dr. Clef replied. “Or perhaps I should say you will hear.”
Gavin turned the crank. Electricity crackled at the spot where the Impossible Cube was connected to the wire. The cube glowed blue and drifted slowly upward. Gavin thought of his new airship. He hadn’t tested it in open sky yet.
Dr. Clef picked up a tuning fork from a set on the table and tapped it. A clear tone-G, Gavin noted-rang out. Dr. Clef pressed the base of the fork against one side of the cube. The note roared into full volume, but it was more than just an auditory note. It went straight through Gavin’s body, through muscle and bone and into his soul. For a moment he felt as if he had no corporeal self. He had fallen into dust and scattered over the entire universe. Then the note ended, and he was standing in the workroom again. He stopped cranking, and the cube sat inert, though it continued to twist the eye.
“What the hell was that?” he gasped.
“Very interesting,” Dr. Clef observed. “Try this one.” He struck another fork-D-sharp-and before Gavin could stop him, he pressed the base against one side of the cube and cranked the handle himself. A cone of sound blasted from the prongs of the fork and gouged out a section of stone wall. Chunks of rock crashed to the floor.
“I like that one,” Dr. Clef said. “How about this one?”
“Stop it!” Gavin shouted, but Dr. Clef struck an A-flat and pressed it to the cube.
With a pop, the cube vanished. It left behind a severed electrical wire.
“Nicht!” Dr. Clef exclaimed.
The workroom door banged open, and Lieutenant Phipps rushed in with two agents behind her. It was the first time he had seen her since the Ward had captured Edwina several days ago. “What the hell was that?” she demanded. “I think everyone within a mile felt it.”
“Which one?” Gavin said. “The soul sound or the explosion?”
“I’m not in the mood for jokes, Agent Ennock. Doctor Clef? What happened?”
Dr. Clef’s wide blue eyes were filling with tears. “My cube! He is gone! Months of work, gone!”
“It’s true,” Gavin said. “It vanished. Right after it did that to the wall.”
“Huh. Maybe it’s for the best, then.” She turned to leave, along with the agents. Gavin ran to catch up with her.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “I wanted to ask you-”
“If it’s about your supposedly secret airship, Agent Ennock, you know we encourage our agents to-”
“No.” He shook his head as the other agents withdrew and Dr. Clef continued to sob over his worktable. “Nothing like that. I wanted to ask about the clockwork plague. Edwina claimed to have a cure, and-”
“That’s enough, Agent Ennock.”
“But-”
“Shut it, boy!” she snapped. Then she closed her eyes for a moment with a sigh and put her metal hand on his shoulder, the most human gesture he had ever seen her make. “Listen, Gavin, I know a cure is important to Alice, which makes it important to you. But I’ve interviewed Edwina extensively and have personally gone through all her research. She’s completely mad. There is no cure and never has been. And we can’t afford to start rumors of one. You can imagine how the public would react.”
Gavin nodded, aware of the weight of her hand on him.
“Good. Don’t speak of this with anyone.” She straightened and dropped her hand. “Get Doctor Clef calmed down and help him clean up.”
“I am on holiday, Lieutenant,” Gavin said. “I just came down here to check on Doctor Clef.”
“There’s no such thing as a holiday in the clockworker holding area, Agent Ennock.”
When she was gone, Gavin went back to the table, where Dr. Clef remained dissolved in tears. “Months and months of time,” he sobbed. “Time flowing like water out of a basket made of gravity. The gravity of my life is pulling me into a sinkhole and warping my space until I can’t escape.”
Uh-oh. He was moving into a bad phase. He’d be worthless for several days. He’d certainly be unable to help clean up. Gavin picked up the A-flat tuning fork with a sigh and accidently smacked it against the table. The moment the note rang out, the Impossible Cube reappeared on the table with another pop.
Gavin jumped, and Dr. Clef instantly snapped to himself. “Wonderful! I should have thought of this myself!”
“Where did it come from?” Gavin asked. His heart was pounding.
“Time, I think,” Dr. Clef told him. “The cube is truly unique, you know. Do you remember when Viktor von Rasmussen found a way to bring his parallel selves from other universes into this one?”
“I heard about it,” Gavin said, “but that was before my time at the Ward.”
“He is dead now. But he started me thinking. I built the cube to be absolutely unique. It actually exists in all the other universes, you see, but they are all the same cube. This gives it many strange properties.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Yes. When you give the cube different energies, it changes them. I think that one”-he gestured at the A-flat tuning fork-“has something to do with time. The cube can’t travel through time, you see. The cube can’t travel at all. I think what happened was that the entire universe-all the universes-moved backward and left the cube in the same place. When you struck the fork again, the cube matched itself to the vibration and pulled the universes back to where they should be, but since we are in the universes, it appeared to us that the cube moved, when actually we did.”
“That’s im-That’s not poss-That. . makes my head hurt.”
Dr. Clef waved a hand. “So, so. This is my masterpiece! A wonderful thing, yes?”
“Yes. I mean, I think so.” Gavin felt off-kilter, and looking at the Impossible Cube didn’t help. “Doctor Clef, you stay here and I’ll be back.”
“Yes, yes.” He waved a hand. “I have more tests.”
Gavin locked the workshop door carefully behind him and dashed down the stone hallway and past the extra-heavy door where Edwina was being kept. Her door had three powerful locks on it, and Gavin didn’t have any of the keys. Only Lieutenant Phipps ever went in, even with food. He also passed the Doomsday Vault with its four guards, and, deciding not to wait for the lift, hurried up the spiral stairs to the office of Susan Phipps.
“I’m going out, ma’am,” he said, poking his head inside, “since I’m still on holiday. But you’ll want to check on Doctor Clef again. He found his cube.”
“Did he?” Phipps got to her feet behind her desk. “And what does it-”
There was a muffled boom. All the lights, including the oil lamps, went out. Shouts went up all over the house. Phipps made an exasperated sound.
“I never liked that thing,” she said, fumbling in the dim moonlight for matches. “I think we’ll have to put it into the Doomsday Vault first thing in the-ouch!”
“What’s wrong?”
“The lamp is still lit. It’s just not giving off any light.”
“I don’t even want to know how that works,” Gavin said. “Do you need me? Alice rented a new house with her bonus, and I’m supposed to help her. . uh. .”
“Go, go.” The lights abruptly came back up. More shouts from the halls and rooms. “But I want you on hand in the morning when we put that thing in the vault. An hour before sunrise. You know the ceremony.”
“Ma’am.” He fled before she could change her mind.
Alice met him at the front door with a kiss. “You’re just in time,” she said.